


Fastened Here We Cannot Move

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-09
Updated: 2009-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:17:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby and Andy, after the "you're basically a minivan" comment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fastened Here We Cannot Move

**Author's Note:**

> For Porn Battle VIII, prompt was 'mile-high'.
> 
> Set during 4.16 'The California 47th'.

And fastened here we cannot move  
Except to one another  
We spread and drown as lilies do  
From nowhere to the centre  
\-- Leonard Cohen, 'The Great Divide'

 

She walks away from him down the corridor of the plane like she doesn't even care. Toby decides that it is best to just ignore the amused looks of the various people she pushes through on the way to what he knew but is not, in hindsight, particularly surprised to find that she had also picked out as the best location -- the small, empty cabin quarters at the southernmost end of the plane -- to have a stand-up argument.

She doesn't seem particularly concerned about waiting until they get there to start, however.

"I just think it might be in your interests to apologise to me, Toby," she says, sure to say his name just a little bit louder than the rest of her sentence.

"Apologise for what!" he says, much more quietly than he would like to but still loudly enough to register as inappropriate in the reactions of the three mute Communications staff he dodges past as he tries to keep up with his ex-wife. "For feeling protective toward my family? For thinking that the idea of giving me a little notice before you crash a ride on Airforce One might not be entirely unreasonable? For -- "

"For certain remarks that you made, sweetheart," (she turns around as she says _sweetheart_ and flashes him her coldest, most icebox-fresh smile) "That could fall under the heading of 'insensitive' and 'uncalled for' and which I am strongly considering allowing to remain uppermost in my mind for the duration of this trip and _possibly_ the duration of this pregnancy. Or of your sad and pathetic life."

"You would like an apology for my comparison -- "

She holds up a single finger from her left hand while he right twists the door handle of the cabin room. "For your oh-so-apt comparison of my body, now carrying your unborn children, Toby, to a vehicular monstrosity," she enters the room and tugs him in after her, fingers disarraying his lapels, "Probably manufactured in Japan -- "

"Actually, I always insult American, Andrea," he says, flicking on the light.

"To a _minivan_," she says, clicking the door shut behind him and standing in front of it, blocking the exit from his personal perdition. "Yes."

"I think if you look back you'll find that on the scale of offences rendered, that's actually pretty small-time."

"Nevertheless, Toby, I think it's not entirely unreasonable of _me_ to expect a minimum standard of respect toward me and toward the kids in which you, in a move I'm sure I will later regret, have a half share of DNA."

He chuckles while rubbing a pair of fingertips into his eye. She re-positions the hand resting on her hip, and raises an eyebrow at him.

"Something funny, sweetheart?"

"I'm wondering about the effects of a pregnant woman's hormone cycle on her likelihood to do bloody murder to her ex-husband, actually."

"Well, I think your particular odds are pretty high right now, Toby."

"Andy, let me ask you something."

"The emergency exit is right there," (she points at the small hatch just behind him) "And I have enough upper body strength to throw you out the window at eleven-hundred feet at any point in my cycle. So, ask away."

"Do you really believe I don't think you're beautiful right now?"

He is close enough to her to find himself scratching around for similes to describe the shift of the light in her eyes, a glint -- like ice cubes in scotch. On other days, other occasions, this change would be a precursor to a smile, but he's pretty sure that sweet talk alone will not accomplish that job today. Nevertheless, he takes a step forward. There is a single step between them now and he would like to close the gap with his hand, lay it on her belly. It's been better than a week since he last did that and he can still feel the warmth of her bed sheets curling around his shoulders and remember the uncanny ability her hair has to smell, at any time of day or night, exactly like the moments immediately before dawn on a Brooklyn street. But he won't take that step. Yet.

"Are you going to talk to me about my _glow_, Toby?"

"No-o. I was not."

"Then I apologise. Carry on."

He winces at her; it ought to be his best effort at a sarcastic eyebrow raise but it does come out more of a wince against her own, pre-emptive, performance of the same manoeuvre, and her hand stroking gently across his chin.

But he carries on: "Do you really think I'm not grateful for your help, Andrea? Do you think I'm not relieved to have you here, with me, where I have at least psychological reassurance of your safety, where I can keep an eye on my kids?"

She scoffs, turns away from him, and that's when he decides he has found the opportune moment to take a very gentle hold of her shoulder. He steps close and bends in and whispers, "Do you really believe I haven't spent the last two hours wishing everyone on this plane would get the hell off so I could find the nearest available conference table and bend you over it? Andy? Do you think that?"

He kisses her with what he hopes is an unbalancing mix of gentlemanly solicitation and unrestrained passion, despite the fact that applying that particular combination of nouns and adjectives to himself even from within the privacy of his own head is something he finds embarrassing. She laughs against his mouth -- the sound of ice cubes breaking apart against the Titanic of his whiskey glass; cracking with the sudden combination of temperatures, cool and optimistically sultry; an combination that has always served them pretty well in the past. He dares a glance at her face.

She smiles at him; he can make no immediate sense of the shadows that throws across her eyes but she reaches up to touch the hair at his temples. Her nails feel both encouragingly and dangerously sharp as she passes them back through his sideburns, into his beard. The pad of her thumb presses against his lower lip and, not for the first time today, he wishes he could reasonably bite it (lip, not thumb) to keep himself from doing something that it would be difficult to explain to the President without also running the risk of spontaneous human combustion.

"You find me a distraction from your work, Toby?" she says, softly.

"Yes."

"A temptation?"

"Yes."

"A presence that gives rise to an _irresistible_ urge, Toby?" She brushes a sneaky hand over the front of his pants as she says _urge_ and finds exactly what, no doubt, she was sure she would find and grins at him. "No need to answer that last one, sweetheart."

"Andrea," he says; growls really.

"Yes, Toby?"

He bends his head to nuzzle against her neck and risks a gentle nip of the pale skin at her throat while he thinks about what his next move should be. "If I apologise ... "

"I don't think I really want to be _bent over_ anything at this point, Toby." She whispers it in his ear. "I mean think of my suspension."

"Andy!"

"But I may allow you to make up for your callousness -- "

"I think _callousness_ is taking offence over and above what is really warranted."

"No, I don't think so, Toby. But whatever word we eventually decide on, I may allow you to recompense me for emotional distress in ways which I'm sure will be agreeable to both parties."

"You've been spending too much time around lawyers. I can tell that much."

"Do these doors lock?" she asks, mouth quirked upwards in what he considers an encouraging way.

"I think you locked it when you came in," he says, tugging at his tie.

"Because I'd rather not share that with the Senior Staff."

"No," he says, reaching for her hand and pulling her away from the door and up to his body. "I don't think they need that information right now."

"And the President," she says, pushing the words out against his mouth, reaching for his bottom lip, holding it between her own then passing the tip of her tongue over it. "Whatever would he say?"

"I don't think," he says, taking hold of her head in both hands, loosing his fingers in her hair, "That he would be all that surprised. He knows all about you."

"You told him some good stories, huh, Toby?"

"He knows all things there are to know, Andrea. He's made that clear on a number of occasions." He drops a light kiss over her mouth and whispers, "I had to sign a sub-clause in my contract."

"So," she says, pulling him across the room to the cabin bed, her thighs flush to his and her belly pushing on the bulge in his trousers, the laugh escaping out the corners of her mouth and making sparks in her eyes, "We are basically screwed?"

"With our pants on."

She laughs and it flows into his mouth like a field of stars. He can feel them blinking out one by one as they fall down his throat. He takes a lock of her hair between his fingers, strokes down to the ends then goes back to the top and starts again. He can feel his eyes fill up with darkness, the better to throw her light against, then he kisses her. Her hands are cold on his face and still as they dig into his shoulders when he pushes her onto the bunk, gently, careful of her, aware as he has never been before of her weight in this blank air. He passes his hands over her shoulders as she lies on her back on the bed, smiling her oblique close-mouthed smile at him. He holds her breasts in his hands, tries to measure the changes of size and weight that two trimesters have wrought.

"Just unbutton the shirt, Toby," she says, quietly, still smiling, laughing at him. "Stop doing the math in your head."

He does what he's told, button by button. Across the spread of her breastbone there are tiny points of red, like freckles, like pinpricks; desire as seen through the Doppler effect. He feels as though he is drifting away from her, miles and miles between his body and hers. Reaching out to touch the swell of her breasts with his fingers is a cosmic effort but, once accomplished, seems to open up a small galaxy of possibility. His hands feel huge and clumsy, slow. She arches into them and he feels her nipples hardening against his palms.

"Toby," she says, the second vowel sound teased out into a moan. "Has it been so long that you've forgetten how, honey?"

He stares at her, narrows his eyes. "I think I can remember," he says, bending close and bracing his arms each side of her shoulders. He passes his cheek against hers and rubs the round of his chin close to her lips. She shifts her head away.

"Could you, I don't know, remember a little _faster_? With a little more application?"

"Is this all part of my programme of penance, Andrea?" he asks, allowing his lips to brush over her cheekbone and eyebrow as he pronounces the 'p's.

Her legs open around his legs, rub up against his thighs, his hips. "Yes, it is, sweetheart. Now get with that programme, please."

More buttons are pulled apart, clumsily, but he figures clumsiness is forgivable if it gets the job done and he demonstrates enough finesse while trying to extricate her from her bra that he is sure to make up some points. He bends his head down to her, and cannot stop himself just resting his cheek against her breasts for a few seconds, or the smile he hides in the half-light when she covers his head with her hand, strokes his curls.

But there is a job to be done and a focus to be maintained: he lifts his head and begins to star her skin with kisses around the circle of her nipples. This tightens the span of her legs around his waist, the insistence, the force with which she pushes up into his body. He smiles, to himself, to her skin, and sucks her left nipple into his mouth and curls his tongue over and over the peak. His hand slips to her thigh, strokes the inside, soft then hard, hard enough to make her buck up into him. He knows already that when he slips her pants down over her thighs and her underwear over her hips, she will be wet. He holds the promise of that in his head against the intervening minutes. He slips a hand down between them and presses it against her, listens to her breathing hitch and pulls back to see the red sparks in her skin glare and fizzle. He places a fingertip on each point of the constellation, bends to lick the sweat gathering at the base of her neck. Her hands scrabble underneath his belly, reaching for his zipper and the buckle of his belt. She's been repeating his name every few seconds for the last thirty, like a summoning, like she's forgotten what the syllables used to mean to her. He pulls back, joins his hands with hers and undoes his belt and zipper, pulls his shirt out of his pants and reaches in to extricate himself from his underwear. This is the moment she chooses to laugh.

"_Andy_?"

She holds her hands up. "_Not_ a judgement, Toby."

"You just thought you'd do a little something for the mood?"

"I'm excited. The danger, the turbulence, how sexy you look, hanging out of your pants, there, sweetie."

"You find this amusing, Andrea?"

"_Exciting_. There's an important difference."

He exhales, tries to make it sound as much like a laugh -- a _good_-natured laugh -- as possible. "Is that right?"

She pulls her heels back against his thighs and laughs for real as he falls forward, catching himself once again with his arms braced beside her shoulders. "Yes, it is."

She is fast, probably because she sees it coming in his eyes, because it's what she used to ask for without asking, because she enjoys the pretence that she is not in minute control of every act he performs on the earth, but he is faster: pinning her wrists together over her head with one hand, holding her hard enough to damage the delicate skin that is white today and will be bruise-blue tomorrow. She hisses and arches up, extending her arms as far as he will allow; testing the space, and his strength. She finds them both good.

He uses his free hand to push his pants and underwear down past his hips, smiling at her, bracing his legs. He curls his fist around his cock experientially, judging readiness, or at least trying to look as though he is and trying _not_ to look as though he is feeling the air in the cabin contract around the five minutes' worth of future they are about to experience.

"Are you going to lie still?" he asks, shifting his hand from his cock to her pants. "Because among the many things you did not tell me before you got onto this airplane was that I might need to bring restraints along on this trip."

"I think you should try it and find out."

He takes her at her word and slowly removes his hand from around her wrists. She lies still, but for the raising of one eyebrow.

"Okay, then," he says, under his breath.

Her thighs open under his hands. Paler skin even than her wrists, and soft, and warm. He strokes the insides, and rises up into the air just as he is about to pass over her vulva. He gives her clitoris a tiny flick with the end of his thumb and smiles out the side of his mouth as he hears her breath hiss again. He gathers his fingers in her pubic hair, and pulls. She curses the air with her eyes tightly closed.

"Andy," he whispers, leaning close, the tongue of his belt licking against her, "How's this?"

"Stage one, sweetheart," she says, the words catching in his hair. "Only stage one." Then she laughs, and the air breaks apart around him as she wraps her arms around his neck.

The belt, the shirt tails, the disarrayed parts of his trousers are pushed aside: he wants to be pressed right up against her; skin-flare, sparks and friction, the rise of her belly like pale blue touchpaper. He misses the first time and the head of his cock rucks up against her clit; she reaches down and holds him there, only letting him go when he begins to rub across her, over and over. But slipping into her is easy, and impossible to stop.

He wants to go slow; he always wants to go slow and always seems to end up somewhere where the rules of time bend easily, accelerating the speed of his strokes without a word of his say-so, running the time through his fingers like sand. She makes blue and white scribbles against the close of his eyes: abstracts of her pleasure, shapes he hopes he will be able to remember tomorrow night, and the night after; he daren't count after that. He loses track of his orgasm early, so that he can only understand _faster, sooner, harder, now_, and that his cock is the only sensate part of his body left, deep as the air, huge as the night. He strikes into her, with her legs wrapped tight around his waist and his arms tight around her head, his shirt cuffs catching in her hair. She comes before he does and her knuckles turn white as she grabs hold of his jacket lapel, throws her head back, exposing the rose-coloured star-splatter at her throat. He sucks on the inside point of her left collarbone and presses in, deep, so hard, caught between the splendour and the pointlessness, wanting his world to turn on the moment that a quick fuck in a dark plane cabin is rendered complete.

He moans (not her name, no particular word, no discernible, nameable emotion) when he comes inside her. For that time elongates again, as if in recompense; the only gift he is likely to get for a while. Her hands are in his hair, passing over his half-closed eyes. She is saying his name as though she remembers what the word means again. He kisses her, softly, pulls out of her and reaches between her legs to wipe some of the come away.

"It's okay, Toby," she whispers, sadly. "I don't want to watch you having to explain stains on your suit."

"All right," he says, uselessly. He cleans himself off as best he can, then puts the suit back together again. Not looking at her is the easy thing now.

"You go first. I'll be your wingman."

He smiles. "What have I said about sporting metaphors, Andy?"

"Go away from me, crazy boy," she says. "I've got some cleaning up to do here."

He nods. He takes a look at her; a booster shot for the vaccine of intimacy that seems years old, even now. She is beautiful in disarray -- sweat sheening her skin, her mouth dark red, her breasts heavy, nipples still erect. He takes a deep breath in, then lets it out. There is only one way to end this with words that is not awkward, and it is not an option available to him anymore. He feels the gold chain around his neck, the one which has lately held the weight of his wedding ring, shift under his shirt. He passes a hand down across his chest, turns away, and slips out into the corridor.

The night shifts, towards dawn anyway. Toby does not sleep. He sees the stars fade over the sky above California, ignoring the glint of a discarded ring carelessly swimming in the sea of his briefing papers.


End file.
